Question of the Week: April 12, 2016

I'm not much of a gardener, but I do have one treasured flowering tree right outside my living-room window: a lilac bush that my sister gave me the first spring after we moved here. 18 years later, it's almost 10 feet tall and nearly as wide, and every year it spreads a little farther and grows a little higher. Amazingly, I haven't managed to kill it!

Lilacs hold special memories for me. One of my grandmothers had a huge lilac-tree border along one edge of her yard. The trees were so tall that the flowers (and their fragrance) reached as high as the second floor of a century-old house with 12-foot ceilings. Every spring, Nanny would open the windows and the fragrance would pour in.

In a few more days the lilacs here will open and release their fragrance in a burst of color. And you can bet I'll open the windows wide, so that as I sit here in my "corner office" I enjoy every breath of that fleeting scent.